The Few, The Proud, The Marines - Recruitment Videos

Enlistment videos engaging young men and women to join the Marines and take up the challenge are a vital part of  our culture. Some commercials stand out more than others, but they never fail to give me a chill up my spine as I watch them or a shiver of pride and occasionally, a full on burst of laughter. No matter where I am when I see one, I always stop, I watch and I find myself wanting to tell their stories. The first video in this list--I remember seeing that at a movie theater. Appealing to a generation of gamers, the Marines continue to grow and evolve.

Here are some of my favorite Marine videos.


Take Up the Challenge

The Marine Corp Way of Life

Towards the Sound of Chaos

Few Will Earn the Title

Guest Author Katie Reus & Giveaway

Thanks so much to Melissa and the ladies here for inviting me to hang out today! I absolutely LOVE the title and concept of this blog.

I’m a huge fan of military romance and while none of my books take place when the hero or heroine is actually serving, the majority of my guys have military backgrounds. Okay, I’m wracking my brain trying to think if there’s even one hero of mine who never served in any branch and I can’t think of one. Because even my paranormal guys have military backgrounds. It might be 100 years ago, but all of them wore a uniform at one time or another. So, not just the majority, but all of them! Even a few of my ladies have military backgrounds.

I get asked a lot of the same questions (hence my new faq page on my website!) and one of them is ‘Why do you write so many former military heroes?’ The answer is pretty simple.

I met and married my husband while he was in the Marines and I’ve seen firsthand how heroic men and women in uniform truly are. Not only that but I’ve seen the sacrifices their spouses and children make and I have the utmost respect for them. A military life, whether you’re the one wearing the uniform or attached to someone who is, can be difficult. Totally worth it, but still, it’s hard.

When I first started writing, it wasn’t even a conscious decision to write heroes with a military background. I wrote about the men and women I had respect for and it just developed that way and stuck. And I’ve got to say, there is something incredibly honorable and yes, sexy about a man in uniform.

In my most recent release, Breaking Her Rules, both the heroine and hero have Marine backgrounds. They both have such strong, disciplined personalities so writing about them was a lot of fun. As a thank you to the ladies here for hosting me I’d love to give away a copy of Breaking Her Rules to one random commenter. I’ll leave it open until tomorrow, 4/13/2013 at noon Central and announce the winner in the comments section so please check back.

If you don’t win a copy, Breaking Her Rules is available now for 99 CENTS for a limited time from: Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore, Kobo Books and All Romance eBooks

Thanks again for having me!

A little about Katie: Katie has been reading romance since a young age—ever since she discovered her mom’s hidden stash. Luckily the addiction stayed with her into adulthood. She writes dark paranormal romance and sexy romantic suspense for Carina Press, Harlequin Nocturne, and NAL/Signet Eclipse. To learn more about her please visit her website, blog, facebook or find her on twitter @katiereus.

Military Organization Section

You may have noticed there is a new section on the blog over on the left.

Military Organizations | Donate & Help

I put it up there to give you a start on where to look if you're interested in donating money. This is NOT  a comprehensive list. I picked out a few that we have probably all heard of and a few that don't get as much attention but are still fantastic causes. There are many more out there and a basic search will bring up more than you ever thought possible.

For example (and I, a military spouse, didn't know about this but my husband did when I mentioned it) Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

What in the world is that? Well here's their mission statement:
The Special Operations Warrior Foundation (SOWF) was founded in 1980 to provide support and assistance to the U. S. military's special operations community, which consist Army Special Forces (Green Berets), the Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Navy Small Boat Teams, Navy SEALs, Air Force Combat Controllers, Air Force rotary and fixed wing squadrons, and Marine Corps special operations personnel. SOWF's mission includes two major aspects in support of special operations personnel: providing a full college education to the surviving children of those who lose their lives while serving in the U.S. military special operations community, and providing immediate financial assistance and support to ensure that severely wounded personnel are able to have their loved ones at their bedside during recovery.

I do want to warn you when you decide you want to donate and are looking for a place. Please check it out first. Many places are on the up and up, some...not so much. There is a site, Charity Navigator, where you can check out the rating of a charity. It goes over the spending and accountability of the charity. There is also a place for reviews.

As with most things, make your own opinion and do what feels right for you. Any size donation is welcome. Whether it be money, time spent volunteering or just getting more attention brought to it.

Have a great day.
Brandy
Navy Brat, Army Prior Service, Army Wife

Recipe for a Military Spouse

I have seen a few different versions of this but this is the most popular one.

Recipe for a Military Spouse

1 1/2 Cups Patience
2 Tablespoons elbow grease
1 Pound courage
1 Cup tolerance
and a Dash of adventure

Marinate frequently with salty tears, and pour off excess fat. 
Sprinkle ever so lightly with money, kneading dough well until payday. 
Season with international spices. 
Bake for twenty years or until done. 
Serve with pride!

Always cut with a military ID card or this recipe will never get you anywhere on base.*

_SERVE WITH PRIDE _
-- Author unknown
*Added by Mel

Back to Writing

Well, this is it, my first blog post and my first steps back into the wonderful world that is romance novels and especially the awesomeness that is military romance!  I took a break from writing to go to grad school, but now I'm back.  I'm a newbie all over again.

Since I haven't been around for awhile, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself.  I've been writing for as long as I can remember.  That said, some days, I can't remember why I went downstairs, so that's not saying much!  I got serious about writing in 2000 and got my first contract in 2004.  I wrote steadily until the environment at my day job necessitated going back to school.  With working full time and going to school part time, something had to give and regretfully that was my writing.  But now that's all done and I can finally write things that don't have to be in APA format!

I tried my hand at mysteries (since I'm not a plotter, I'm not very good at the who-done-it) and historicals, but fell in love when I dove into my first military romance.  I'm not sure what took me so long to come to that realization, since Suzanne Brockmann and Catherine Mann are two of my favorite authors and a man in a military uniform has to power to stop me in my tracks (My father always reminds me to behave when he takes me on a base!).

Men in uniform have always had my heart.  I'm an Air Force brat, I grew up around flight lines and men in OD green.  One of those men came home at night (or morning as the case may have been) to my mom, my brother and I.  I grew up around men who put duty, honor, and country first but still managed to be fantastic husbands and fathers.  Not to mention the hot physically fit bodies!!  Let's not forget the sexy bods!!  Not that I could ever forget a sexy bod.  It takes a very special man to look good in OD green fatigues (I'm showing my age since the USAF doesn't even wear those anymore and hasn't for a while!).  Now my son wears the uniform of an USAF LT (I don't drool over his co-workers, though, there's a fine line between cougar and creepy!).

It only made sense, then, that I'd want to bring those qualities exemplified by the members of our military to the heroes of my books.  Because of my history, I choose to make my heroes (and a heroine) members of the USAF.  What can I say, I love a man in (or out of) a flight suit!

My WIP is about a C-130 gunship crew member grounded because of bad intel, a dom who meets his match with a do-gooder social worker sub.  I hope to share (call sign) Truck and Genevieve's progress with you.  I also hope to be able to share the stories of the other crew members of the gunship.  And maybe, just maybe, Truck will let all of us know what name is on his birth certificate!  Because I'm really beginning to wonder just how horrible his name is if he won't give it up!

I can be reached at FeliciaForella @ comcast dot net.  Check me out on Facebook.  And you can check out my webiste for my backlist, www.FeliciaForella.com.  My website needs a new design, desperately, which is in the works.

On a complete and total side note, Happy Birthday to my mom!

Loving the Damaged Hero...

Alex-Minsky- Michael Stokes Photographer

Romance novels, in general, are written around a certain type of man. Tall, dark and handsome. Every once in a while you have a blond or an auburn haired guy thrown into the mix, but the tall and handsome part are almost mandatory. It just doesn’t have the same ring to it to say that ‘he walked into the room and lifted up on tip-toe, trying to see his date over the shoulders of the men around him.’

Something occurred to me one day when I was watching the news. Bryan Williams had just listed the number of Americans that had been bombed in Iraq that day. It dawned on me that there were young, good looking young men returning changed, some of them no longer good looking. Tall strapping soldiers that had left wanting to serve their country would return with no legs. Or arms. Or haunted by dreams and flashbacks of what they’d had to do to survive.

Hopefully, those returning veterans would have family and loved ones to return to, and those loved ones would take them back no matter how they looked or acted or what struggles they had to go through. But then I started to hear stories of wounded men being jilted by their significant others while they were in hospital, or sometimes while they were still overseas. I just couldn’t even imagine. If my husband had gone to war, I would welcome him home no matter what shape he was in or what I had to do to take care of him. No matter what the struggle, I would do my best to ensure that his sacrifice had not been in vain.

A good portion of the men and women that return from war don’t have significant others. I knew it would be a struggle for them to find love, especially those changed physically. Their lovers would have to be extraordinary, willing to accept  physical and mental limitations, volatile emotions. They would have to be willing to care for the ones they loved.

When I started the Lost and Found series, I worried that the general public wouldn’t want to read about damaged heroes. I write about men in wheelchairs, men with missing limbs, faulty minds, long-term care issues, and they aren't fixed by the end of the story.  I write about men who can’t adapt to life at home. But they're heroes. I grew up reading tall, dark and handsome, like most of the romance reading public, but I had to write about the underdogs, the ones who should be recognized the most simply for the job that they’ve done to protect US.

The response I’ve gotten has been humbling. I’ve heard from so many mothers, wives and girlfriends thanking me for writing about the very real issues that they have to deal with on a day to day basis. Sometimes they add stories about their struggles, and it reminds me all over again how much we need to appreciate our military.

I honestly believe that there is a soul-mate for everybody, no matter how they look on the outside, how they sound, how they move. As long as their heart is intact, they need love.

And I'll be writing them.

The first book of the series, The Embattled Road, is free. You can check it out here.

In the harrowing prequel to The Lost and Found series, three embattled Marines must deal with their devastating physical and emotional injuries in a world that seems to have turned against them.
When the rescue helicopter crashes into his convoy in Iraq, Marine First Sergeant Duncan Wilde struggles with the loss of men, his career and the use of his body. Things can't get much worse. Until his fiancée decides she has to move on with her life, and that of her unborn child by another man.
Sergeant Chad Lowell knew when he went to war that it would come with a price. And it did. A young Marine under his command is killed by a landmine. Chad's left with one less leg and a mountain of recriminations. That doesn't mean he wants to be a pitied by every female he comes in contact with.
Gunnery Sergeant John Palmer is furious at the hand he's been dealt. He's served his country faithfully, if not without antagonism, for many years. Now they're turning him out like a relative who has overstayed his welcome. And, since he's not even a real man anymore, maybe it is time to move on permanently. 
Can these wounded warriors use a friendship borne out of adversity to form a partnership rescuing others? And can they find real love in spite of their challenges?

And a portion of the proceeds from the following books will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project.

You can connect with JM on Facebook or Twitter, or contact her directly at authorjmmadden@gmail.com.

The Power of a Dream

On March 26^th of 2013 I received the news that my debut romantic thriller, Forged in Fire, had been nominated in the Best First Book and Best Romantic Suspense categories of Romance Writers of 

America’s RITA contest.  

The funny thing is that up until three years ago I had no interest in writing military romance. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sub-genre and I’ve been reading it since I discovered that mystical alpha hero called the Navy SEAL through Suzanne Brockmann’s Prince Joe.

I was instantly hooked and devoured the entire Tall, Dark and Dangerous series. I even joined Brockmann’s yahoo group and chatted with other ravenous SEAL fans.

Back then I’d just started writing consistently, although I wasn’t very good at it. And I wasn’t writing SEAL heroes. Nope, my heroes were in law enforcement—sexy alpha homicide detectives. In fact, while I loved reading about military heroes, I had no interest in writing them. No sir, my heart belonged to my hot cops. 

Fast forward to February of 2010, when the strangest thing happened, I had an incredibly vivid dream involving an attempted hijacking and three Navy SEALs who risked their lives to prevent it. Instantly, the entire course of my career changed. 

The dream was sparked by an intense reading sprint, but not one involving military romances. Nope, the dream was sparked by vampires—specifically, by The Black Dagger Brotherhood. Apparently, I’d been living in a vacuum for years and while I’d heard of the BDB (who hasn’t?) I’d never tried any of the books. That changed the winter of 2010. I picked up the first book in the series out of curiosity, to see what all the buzz was about.  Three chapters into Dark Lover I hopped online and ordered the rest of the books in the series and paid extra for express shipping. I wanted them NOW! What followed was a reading glut of massive proportions and night after sleepless night. The world and characters consumed me.

When I finished the last book, I felt like I was in withdrawals from some serious drug—off balance and fuzzy headed. And sleepy. Very sleepy.  All of which turned out to be symptoms of a nasty cold. Apparently, my body no longer tolerated weeks of little to no sleep. So I loaded up on Nyquil and hit the mattress and I dreamed—but not of massively muscled vampire warriors. I dreamed of a different kind of warrior, the warriors of SEAL Team 7. 

Although, if you think about it, the Black Dagger Warriors have a lot in common with military special ops warriors. Both brotherhoods put their lives on the line without hesitation, they protect those unable to protect themselves, they would step in front of a missile for someone they loved; without blinking, without thinking, on pure instinct. 

Both sets of warriors are the quintessential hero.

As an added bonus, there is this tremendous depth of respect and love (although you’ll never get them to admit it) between the warriors of the two brotherhoods.

In other words, the same qualities that drew me to the BDB, are what drew me to the warriors of my Red-Hot SEALs series. When I awoke from the dream, all I could think about were my dream warriors. In fact, they were so consuming I dropped the book I’d been revising at the time, and wrote the dream sequence. This became the opening scenes to Forged in Fire, the first book in my Red-Hot SEALs series of high-octane romantic thrillers.  

I really thought my obsession with the dream and the Navy SEAL warriors who dominated it, would fade once I had the dream down. Instead the characters took on a life of their own and dragged me along behind them. I became as obsessed with them, as I’d been with the Black Dagger Brotherhood or the warriors from Brockmann’s Tall, Dark and Dangerous series all those years ago.

As luck would have it, readers took to these alpha heroes as much as I did, and Forged in Fire quickly found a following, which has enabled me to continue writing the series. I’m absolutely thrilled I can give each of these courageous, alpha heroes their own happily ever after.

Right now, there are four books planned in the series, with the second and third book set to release in Jan and Feb of 2014. But if  reader interest continues, the series will be ongoing.  

It’s amazing how my career completely shifted focus, and all because of a dream.